Unfortunately I’ve been terribly busy lately with moving and starting night classes for a graduate degree. However, with my new apartment almost all settled, and the routine of work and classes underway, I hope to get back to some more regular blogging. I’ve only been away from 1up for two weeks or so, but it already feels like an eternity.
Of course, what better way to get back into the swing of things than with this ludicrous assertion by Quantic Dream, the developer behind Heavy Rain.
Quantic Dream believes, “that the company lost between €5 and €10 million of royalties due to the second hand sales of influential PlayStation 3 title Heavy Rain.”
Co-founder, Guillaume de Fondaumiere, argues that these second hand sales “were fuelled by the last recession,” and that this is, “one of the number one problems right now in the industry.”
Here is his take:
“I can take just one example of Heavy Rain - we basically sold to date approximately two million units, we know from the trophy system that probably more than three million people bought this game and played it. On my small level it's a million people playing my game without giving me one cent. And my calculation is, as Quantic Dream, I lost between €5 and €10 million worth of royalties because of second hand gaming.”
Forgive me for rolling my eyes at this ungracious self-pity, but de Fondaumiere’s complaint here is a bit ridiculous. It’s one thing to make a nuanced case for why retailers like Gamestop are getting too much by simply being the middle man. But it seems like here, de Fondaumiere is basically saying, hey, all you people who buy used-games or borrow them from friends? Yea, you stole from me. Phrases like, “without giving me one cent,” and “I lost between €5 and €10 million worth of royalties,” gives the impression that de Fondaumiere has somehow been exploited and pillaged by digital pirates. However, the activity he’s raging against is as simple and innocuous as a gamer wanting to buy an old, and in most cases moderately damaged game (including scuffed discs and dented cases), or a friend who plays through a title, earning trophies as they go, because they were lucky enough to have their friend lend it to them.
Of course, de Fondaumiere puts his finger on the problem later in the interview:
“Now are games too expensive? I've always said that games are probably too expensive so there's probably a right level here to find, and we need to discuss this altogether and try to find a way to I would say reconcile consumer expectations, retail expectations but also the expectations of the publisher and the developers to make this business a worthwhile business.”
Exactly! If as a developer you find out that you’re losing out on a significant amount of potentialrevenue because your title isn’t a must-have or prices too many consumers out of the market, then it’s your job to navigate demand and figure out a viable alternative. De Fondaumiere needs to put aside the woe-is-me industry whining and just respond, as any business does in a free market, to what consumers are saying. Actions speak louder than words, and if players aren’t turning out in droves to buy your product new, the problem probably lies on the supply side of the equation.
I think the reason why so many developers and publishers share either de Fondaumiere’s sentiment or his specific belief, is because of how the digital landscape has changed creative expectations. If I produce a digital product that can be replicated and distributed with ease, of course I’m going to feel like everyone should be paying me royalties for using it. In a digital market, what suppliers are actually charging consumers for is access. “Ownership,” in the traditional sense, just doesn’t work when products are finite. When you download a video game or iTunes app, you don’t “own” it, which is why ultimate control, even after purchase, is maintained by those companies who first sold it to you. Now the digital model of selling and buying is still evolving, and I think it comes with it’s own problems, some of which will be solved going forward, but many of which might just end up not being reconcilable.
But when de Fondaumiere notes that, “because of second hand gaming, they will simply stop making these games. And we'll all, one say to the other, simply go online and to direct distribution,” what he and others are realizing is that a product that originates in a computer should stay there, from beginning to end. Now I love physical copies of video games as much as anyone. I could, and probably will at some point, make series of nostalgic posts about box art, the smell of video game manuals, and the thrill of walking up and done the aisle of brick and mortar retailers while searching for my next purchase. But what sense, economic or other, does it make for a company to force their digital, non-physical creations onto material hardcopies? De Fondaumiere feels like used copies are a knock against his property rights because he’s conflating the digital nature of how he creates his content with the still physical nature of how it’s distributed and sold.
And urging gamers to buy “new,” like some in the industry are trying to do, will only retard the video game sector’s progress as it awkwardly struggles to sort itself out. We’re in the middle of a transition. There will be winners and losers. But things need to play themselves out, and shaming either party into doing something contrary to their self-interest will make the present market confusion persist.
Cross-posted from 1up.com community blog, "ethangach."